Paper Sorcerer - 1st person turn-based RPG on Kickstarter

July 3rd, 2012, 20:14

I just stumbled upon this interesting project on Kickstarter - which has 5 more days to go. Wizardry-style gameplay combined with adventure game elements (the dev mentions Shadowgate as another inspiration). This is a one-man project with a very cool pen & ink hand-drawn art style. Might be of interest to some here!

Very nice! I usually don't like hand drawn art because it is too cartoony, but this has style! Also, game play sounds interesting, although level scaling is tough to do right. I do think it will be a challenge for him to support all the platforms on his budget.

The devs pretty much give their time for free; the KickStarter donation amount is a barometer of customer interest more than anything else. Maybe it gets picked up by someone with deep pockets if the interest level is high?

He did mention in his post that he's already put in a year of work on the project - so the Kickstarter is probably meant to cover other costs as mentioned on the Kickstarter page (test devices for mobile platforms, Unity licenses, art supplies, business fees, more content, more polish / refinements, etc.)

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Sorry for the OT, but should we view KickStarters more as promotion vehicles rather than real calls for funding?

I think it really varies from project to project. Some are already far along in development but still need funding for a final level of polish, while others haven't even started. Some are more like a pre-order arrangement, for example to pay for print-run costs (in the case of book projects). Of course all projects benefit from exposure on the site too, and also it helps gauge interest. So projects use Kickstarter in a variety of ways, depending on what they need the money for.

Graphics looks very nice.Gameplay looks like jRPG and those game tend to get grindy.If it's too grindy it's potential deal breaker for me.Anyway interesting looking project but I think I will wait for full release and opinion of watch upon release.

We broke $11,000 already and it looks like it might hit the 12K stretch goal before it's done.

As far as the goal, 5K was the bare minimum for what I budgeted it would need to make it. As a first time developer, I preferred a little funding to no funding, which is what I would get if I set a high goal and then failed to hit it.
Luckily everything went smashingly.

Originally Posted by Nameless one
Graphics looks very nice.Gameplay looks like jRPG and those game tend to get grindy.If it's too grindy it's potential deal breaker for me.

I'm focusing a lot on making it as grindless and strategic as possible, the focus is on less frequent but more difficult battles so that you're not just fighting the same guys repeatedly.